October 29
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A wet morning. |
My alarm went off at 6. Alarm, you say? Yes, alarm. The campground had quite a few more people in it now, and I wanted to get my shower before the rest of the folks took all the hot water. There was no noise outside, so I catnapped until 7, then peeked out. Fog. HEAVY fog. Bummer. I got my shower, and when I walked back, Richard had started packing up. Going home already? He replied that he was, he thought the fog had set in, the roads were going to be wet and covered with leaves, and that did not sound like fun to him. I went up to the pay phone and called Lana, and asked her to pull up the weather for the area on the computer. 20% chance of rain. I decided to wait around and see what happened. I messed around, then had a leisurely breakfast with Richard and Neil. No improvement in the fog. They left, I messed around a bit more, and things still had not improved. “Oh, well” I thought, “I will make Lana happy and come home a day early”. I packed up everything wet, checked out and hit the road at 11:30. It was foggy and wet all the way down the mountain. I was creeping along in the low visibility, expecting a car to run up behind me at any time, when I ran up behind a group of three bikes, going slower than I was! Maybe I wasn’t moving so slow, after all. |
The skies remained overcast until Eufaula, Alabama, then it cleared out and warmed up. I ruminated on the trip as I traveled familiar roads. This trip had been quite different from my western trips. The east is crowded, towns are close together, and there is more traffic to deal with. That, plus the issue of visiting parks that were all pretty close to each other, meant that I didn’t do nearly as much riding in this 17-day period as I would have expected.
The trip also had a somber feel, being centered on a war and all the misery that surrounds war. 600,000 people dead, untold numbers crippled, thousands of square miles of the South laid waste, families destitute, and a President assassinated. But I also considered the positive side. We got through it. 139 years later, I live in a united country, the greatest nation in history. We are no longer marred by slavery. I don’t own anybody and nobody owns me. My black friends and neighbors enjoy the same constitutional protections and freedoms as I do, and we all have more liberty and opportunity than any other group of people in history. The South is once again a vibrant, beautiful place to live.
I gassed up just south of Dothan, Alabama, to get some of that cheap Alabama gas, and crossed the border for that last stretch towards home. I set the throttle lock and listened to tunes, watching the countryside pass by. Up ahead, I saw a large bird flying south right over the road. I thought “That sure is a BIG hawk”. I caught up to him, and as I got under him, I looked up. There was an unmistakable white head. A bald eagle. A very rare sight in these parts. The irony was stunning to me. On the last day of a trip that centered on a war that tore our country apart, there was our national symbol, flying wild and free, guiding me home.
God Bless America.